Homeland (26 page)

At the midday break Billy said, ‘Listen, Johnnie, if you’re going to stick around, you’ve got to learn to take a joke. A joke’s not serious, right? It’s meant for a
laugh.’

The Polack gazed at him solemnly. ‘I like good jokes, Billy. When I hear them I laugh just plenty.’

At dusk when they hauled the loaded cart back, one to each shaft, Billy didn’t stop for the usual breather halfway up the slope to the house but kept going until, nearing the top, the
Polack slipped and half fell, only saving himself from the mud by clinging to the shaft.

‘You should have got yourself a wooden leg, Johnnie. Less prone to rot.’

Through his breathlessness the Polack laughed. ‘This is good joke, Billy!’

‘You don’t say.’

‘I am laughing. See? Ha! Ha!’

‘Very funny,’ Billy said sourly.

That night after supper the Polack got the old man talking about the local festivals – Wassail Night, the ashen faggot ceremony and the rest of the claptrap – until, unable to bear
it any longer, Billy cut short what was normally his favourite smoke of the day and pulled on his oilskins.

Outside, the rain was at its heaviest, sounding tattoos on roofs and empty drums and metal sheeting. He had a job seeing his way up the hill. The lane was streaming with water, he felt the slip
and slide of it under his boots, and on the steepest section a small brook must have broken its banks because at one point the water was almost over his feet.

Coming into the village, striding head down under his sou’wester, he was abreast of the church before he realised he could see no lights directly ahead. He slowed uncertainly, peering into
the blur. To the right a clear light burned in the pub and another in the house beyond. Only Annie’s place was showing nothing, not even a glow from behind a curtain.

He decided she must be in the kitchen or singing the child to sleep or, heeding the government appeals for frugality, was trying to save on electricity.

He went up to the front door and knocked. The sound was rapidly swallowed up by the splattering of the rain and the torrent of a faulty gutter. He knocked again louder, and now the sound seemed
to be sucked into the darkness of the house. All kinds of thoughts chased through his mind while he stood in the rain. That it was past the child’s bedtime. That if Annie had planned to be
out, she would surely have told him. That she’d gone out on purpose, to tease him. That she was seeing someone else, had been all along, that he should have realised, it was so bloody
obvious. That he wanted her more than he’d wanted anyone, that his need for her just then was close to torture.

He followed the lane around to the side of the house, but there was no light showing in the kitchen, nor in the lean-to bathroom beyond. Retracing his steps to the front door he stood there for
another minute or two before making his way to the George. He was in no mood for clodhoppers’ talk, but it couldn’t be helped. His feet were wet and he needed a drink.

The pub reeked of wood and cigarette smoke made more pungent by the stench of steaming wool. For once the place was almost busy; there must have been over a dozen customers. Billy looked for his
regular drinking companions the Honeyman brothers, but to his annoyance saw only Frank Carr in a party by the fireplace and the usual old codgers in the corner playing dominoes under a pall of
smoke, and at the bar two groups of men: four farm workers who acknowledged him with a grunt and a lift of their beer glasses, and beyond them, four men he didn’t recognise, two in
uniform.

The landlady declined Billy’s offer of a drink – she was a bit rushed at the moment, she said – so he drank alone, a Scotch for a change.

The farm workers directed occasional remarks his way, about the rain, or the flood that would surely be coming any minute, or the tractor that had been stuck all day in a ditch, but for the most
part they trotted out the same time-worn comments and jokes to each other, and laughed the same booming laughs.

From the end of the bar shouts of mirth also rang out, then a voice that rose above the rest and stayed there, chattering wildly in a chaotic mixture of broken English and the mishmash of
tormented sounds that Billy had come to recognise as Polack-speak. Beyond the farm workers, Billy saw a uniform with Polish flashes at the shoulder, and above it an extraordinary face, pale and
startlingly thin, with sunken cheeks and protruding bones and deep shadows under the eyes, as though its owner had been badly starved and not seen a square meal since. He was laughing wildly and if
he wasn’t already drunk Billy guessed he soon would be. With him was another Polish soldier, the same sort of age but with a bit of flesh on him, and two men with the sallow complexion, quick
eyes and long unkempt hair of tinkers. Billy wondered what had brought the Poles here, a good five miles from their camp, and supposed they had outstayed their welcome in the pubs around
Middlezoy.

Billy ordered another drink. He had forgotten the joys of Scotch. Scotch didn’t make you stupid like cider or stroppy like ale; it sharpened your wits and heightened your senses. Eyeing
the group by the fire, he waited till Frank glanced his way then raised his glass in ironic salute. To his satisfaction Frank ran true to form and, entirely missing the joke, responded with a slow
self-satisfied smirk. ‘You great berk,’ Billy called out in a voice almost loud enough to be heard across the room.

Billy tried to spin his drink out for as long as possible, but when he next looked at the clock it was to find that barely twenty minutes had passed since his arrival. He longed to go and see if
lights were showing in Spring Cottage, but he didn’t want to risk the inevitable jokes if he had to come back into the pub again. Best to leave it a while. Or not. The indecision, like the
jittery excitement he always felt at the prospect of seeing Annie again, formed a knot in his stomach. He ordered a third drink. The landlady, who was less rushed now, said she wouldn’t say
no to a Scotch. It was the last bottle, she said; she didn’t know when she’d be getting any more. The wholesaler kept his supplies back for his biggest customers and she was never going
to be a big customer, was she? It was typical of the way the country was going, she complained: one rule for the rich, one for the poor, and now, on top of everything else, there was going to be a
coal shortage.

Suddenly the room seemed too hot to Billy, he felt he could hardly breathe, but before he could drain his drink he became aware of a new stridency in the voices at the bar, a mood of
confrontation. The group at the far end had been getting noisier for some time, emitting shrieks and yelps and sudden bellows of laughter, but now the farm workers were sending up a storm of their
own, berating the other group for something, Billy couldn’t immediately make out what. There were yells of ‘Watch out there!’ and ‘Oi oi!’ and ‘Mind your
manners!’, then a jostling, a bumping of shoulders and elbows in what appeared to be a skirmish, an impression reinforced by the landlady’s shrill appeal for calm and the sudden
backward lurch of the nearest farm worker, who barged into Billy, forcing him hard up against the bar and knocking the last of his drink over his hand.

Billy shoved the other man roughly away and sucked the liquid off his knuckles. When he looked again he realised someone was on the floor, a slouched figure sitting with his legs bent awkwardly
under him and his head bowed over his chest. As Billy peered through the press of bodies, the figure keeled over on its side in an untidy sprawl of limbs that managed to entangle themselves in a
number of other people’s. The wall of backs parted momentarily as the farm workers extricated themselves, then closed again as the argument turned to mockery and derision. Moving away towards
the door, Billy identified through the forest of legs the figure of the emaciated Polish soldier lying unconscious or otherwise dead to the world, his mate kneeling at his side.

Billy wasn’t aware of the door opening until he felt a rush of cold air on his neck, followed by a sprinkling of water as the incomer brushed rapidly past him.

‘Right, men! That’s enough! Stand clear!’

The brisk commanding tone was one Billy recognised instantly: the bark of an officer.

The room fell quiet. Two of the farm workers stopped in mid-speech and gazed slack-jawed at the new arrival, the other two looked round vacantly to see what was going on, while the tinkers
stared sullenly. They shuffled clear as the officer crouched down beside the prone figure and began to examine him, lifting each eyelid in turn and laying a palm on the bony forehead. Finally, in a
practised move straight from the battlefield, he felt the neck for a pulse.

‘You two – pick this man up.’

The Pole’s mate and one of the tinkers hauled him up and propped him on a chair.

‘A bit the worse for wear, that’s all,’ someone scoffed.

‘Bring some water.’

One of the farm workers jerked into life as if pulled by strings and shouted ‘Water!’ to the landlady. After waiting impatiently for her to pour it, he carried the glass with
exaggerated care to the officer and presented it obsequiously: anxious to please, eager to serve.

Long live the officer class, Billy thought; what would we do without them? Except this wasn’t the real thing, this wasn’t one of the gormless toffs for whom it was possible to feel a
fleeting pity. This was Lyndon Hanley, farmer’s son, promoted by dint of brain and ability: an altogether more dubious animal.

Hanley lifted the Pole’s chin and poured some water into his mouth. Most of it spilled down his tunic. Hanley scrutinised him again and bent his ear to the Pole’s mouth.

‘This man’s ill,’ he declared.

‘He’ll be a darn sight iller tomorrow!’ someone laughed.

‘No – his breathing’s low. He needs a doctor.’

The second Pole nodded vehemently and repeated, ‘Doctor. Yes, doctor.’

‘Where’s this man based? What’s his name?’

When the second Pole looked blank, one of the tinkers mumbled, ‘Middlezoy Camp. Name o’ Joe.’

‘Surname?’

The tinker snorted as if the idea of knowing a Polish name, let alone pronouncing it, was a great joke.

The officer addressed the question to the other Pole. ‘Joe what?’ He rotated a palm in the air by way of a prompt.

The Pole understood at last. ‘Walczak,’ he said. ‘Jozef Walczak.’

‘Is there a resident doctor at the camp?’

The Pole lifted his shoulders uncertainly.

‘At Middlezoy Camp – doctor?’

‘One day yes. One day no.’

Appearing to come to a decision, Hanley straightened up and cast around. ‘Has anyone got a car?’

Quietly Billy retrieved his oilskins from the hook by the door and began to pull them on.

‘I’ve a van outside,’ muttered the tinker. ‘But it’s loaded with junk.’

From the group by the fireplace someone said, ‘I could fetch a car but it’d take a good twenty minutes.’

Hanley’s eyes swung round and fixed on Billy. If he remembered their last meeting he gave no sign of it. But then he’d been drunk at the time; now he looked eerily sober, his gaze
pale and hard.

Buttoning his jacket, Billy shook his head slowly.

‘It’ll have to be the van then. Give a hand here.’ Three of the farm workers lumbered into action, as did the younger of the tinkers and the second Pole. Perhaps because there
were so many bearers they were badly coordinated: as they picked up the Pole they let his head drop back. The officer immediately moved round to support it, cradling it in one hand.

‘The door!’ he commanded Billy.

Billy, who had been on the point of opening it anyway, paused to give him a slow stare, a delay which forced the bearers to halt before passing through.

The party had to wait again in the pouring rain while the older tinker rearranged the back of the van. Finally they laid the sick man awkwardly over the scrap metal. Hanley took off his jacket
and, folding it several times, placed it under the man’s head.

When the van doors had banged shut Hanley turned and said crisply, ‘Well done, everybody. Now I suggest you all settle down and enjoy the rest of your evening.’

The farm workers shuffled their feet sheepishly and muttered their thanks. Distancing himself rapidly from this abject display, Billy took two steps back, and when that still didn’t feel
far enough turned on his heel and strode away. If there was one thing that irked him more than a smug officer, it was a smug ex-officer who thought he was still running the show.

Billy had spotted the glitter of Annie’s porch light from the door of the pub. Now, as he quickened his pace towards it, he felt a jittery beat of excitement and uncertainty at the
prospect of seeing her again. He wasn’t sure what he felt for her: lust, need, compulsion, love. But whatever it was, it was strong, like the pull of a drug. Sometimes he veered towards the
idea of love because it made him feel he was joining a hitherto closed brotherhood of men who experienced deeper, better feelings; at other times he recoiled from it because, as all sensible men
knew, it was a trap.

He had barely knocked when Annie opened the door.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ she exclaimed.

‘Why, who else did you think it was going to be?’

‘No one,’ she said, flashing her eyes in reproof. ‘So, to what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in for a cuppa?’

‘Look, I can’t this evening, Billy. I’m really behind.’

‘But I’ve come specially.’

‘We weren’t meant to be meeting till Saturday.’

‘But I’m here now, aren’t I?’ He raised both hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘And I’m wet through.’

She gave in with a shake of her head and a low laugh. ‘Give me half an hour, then.’

He stepped forward as if to come in, but she blocked his way.

‘No. Go for a drink,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll have a chance to sort myself out.’

‘I would, but there’s been a bit of a commotion in the pub. A bit of a rumpus.’

‘No!’ She was in turn surprised, amused and intrigued. ‘Well,’ she declared at last, ‘whatever next? You’d better come in then.’

While she was upstairs with the child he made himself at home, hanging up his oilskins, putting the kettle on, fanning the sitting-room fire, which had only just been lit. By the time Annie
reappeared, the room was just beginning to warm up.